FNApps

If you like to get the most out of your purchases, you’ll probably love the FNApps. You can run several programs on the Killer itself, without having to use your main CPU for the task. Sounds like a fantastic plan, but in practise there are little applications for the non-coder to use. Plus, can you think of a reasonable task that the Killer NIC could do with its 400mhz processor that would be any use?

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The Bitorrent FNApp sent with the latest drivers is a good idea, but a highly cut down client compared to uTorrent or BitLord. You lose useful information that a better client could display, such as torrent contents and number of seeders etc. Its basic, but it does the job, providing that you have a large enough USB disc to use with it. The bonuses are that the Killer NIC does all the work and doesn’t query your hard disc with the downloaded information as it just goes to the USB disc. No CPU cycles are used as the Killer NIC deals with it, and everything seems fine. However, you can’t access the USB disc contents directly (unless you use the FNAftp application and sift through the folders), which means that finding free space, or even the downloaded files a pain (time to get on the floor and swap the USB drive port to your motherboard).

Strangely, the FNApp Bittorrent client appears to bypass the GameFirst feature of the card, as a normal Bittorrent client running at the same speed will provide you with slightly better pings.

The other packaged FNApp is the Firewall application which seems like a good idea. However, unlike the Windows Firewall or similar, the card doesn’t ask you to open a port when a program asks for it. This means that you have to manually add programs and their ports which gets very annoying after a while.

Issues

During the testing, a few problems were noticed. For one, my home rig has never crashed. It did a couple of times with the Killer NIC installed. Sometimes when either my work, or home PC would boot with the Killer NIC installed sometimes it wouldn’t be noticed and a full uninstall/reinstall process had to be carried out. Annoying… especially if you’d sunk £150 into it.

Just as I was finishing this review, I had the first crash ever with this office machine.